100 State Street

There's no place like home, there's no place like home. Click. click.

After arriving early thursday morning to Jeff's old apartment in CT we spent the next 2 days slowly moving all of my stuff first, then his stuff and then the big stuff to our new little apartment. Luckily it's only about 5 minutes away so it wasn't horrible and we had some awesome friends to help us. It was so exciting to finally get in there and I couldn't wait until we spent our first night there, our home and not at his apartment anymore. (No offense boys)
It took us about a week to get all settled, furniture set up, pictures hung on the walls and then the time came for shopping. And we shopped. Shopped 'til we dropped, for a good 3 days! Thanks to all of our awesome and generous family and friends we were able to use our wedding gift cards to buy the necessities for a home and even get some fun things like plants to help make it a little more homey.
We love our little house. We love that it's OURS. We love that we can do whatever we want and not worry about roommates. We love that we are both a little OCD and keep it spick and span. We love playing our music loud and wearing or not wearing whatever we want. It's so nice and so fun having your very own little house with all our own stuff; we are loving every minute of it.
Here are some pics of our little place. We are still moving things around and decorating but without further adiue...


moving in




It's nice to have men around





We have our own separate entrance which makes it feel more like a condo or duplex sort of thing rather than a large apartment complex, it's great



And now for the inside..!


this is my tiny but darling little kitchen. I was bummed out at first by the size but it's turned out to be the perfect amount space and storage for us and I love cooking and making sweets in there








our breakfast/dinner nook. Bob sets the mood for a great day or evening




Jeff's school/desk area


our awesome vaulted ceilings--hello 15ft christmas tree! ;)




Before he finished school and came home Jeff was able to get our table, couch and these book shelves for us

These next couple are our bathroom and bedroom















our surprisingly big walk in closet. we were excited

Like I said we love our little place and feel so lucky, it is quite a bit larger and nicer than some of our friends we have seen and we are paying close to the same or much less than some of them so we are very happy to be where we are! We also have a sweet pool that is right next to our house (now if they would just fill it and open it! they are finishing a renovation..), we do our laundry in a laundromat on site which is actually pretty fun for me and we have a little fitness center so we are feeling very much at home.


Last wednesday we had our friends Brad and Jane (Brad is a 3rd year PA student at QU and his wife Jane just graduated the NP program at QU a few months ago. they are both from SLC and in our ward) over for dinner for helping us move. It was fun to show off our little place and we planned a mexican style dinner. Jeff and I made pineapple chicken fajitas and spanish rice and they brought chips and guacamole and Horchata, mmm.. it was delicious and for dessert we had to die for tres leches cake with whipped topping and strawberries it was yummy! We ended the evening with 2 games of Yahtzee, which I won! It was awesome, I didn't even like the game when we started and then I kicked some serious trash. I think it's safe to say it's my new favorite game and you know I hung up my score card on the fridge ;)

4 days and 11 states later

After our glorious week of fun in the sun we spent 2 nights in Salt Lake before hitting the road. The night before we left we went to dinner with friends and Jeff presented them with special little gifts he made just for them. (Photo collages he made for them of us. They were thrilled!)



Sunday before we officially left the state we had breakfast with my family in the morning and stopped in Midway for dinner with Jeff's family. Just before we got to their house we stopped to stock up on snacks and drinks for the days ahead and when I got out of the car I stubbed my toe on the car tire---After the half my toenail turned black, unattached itself from my toe except for one tiny strip, turned white and magically reattached itself.--Well not anymore. I looked down to see my toe nail sitting belly up next to the tire! Eww.. I have been a toenail less monster ever since.

Anyway, we said our goodbyes and hit the road. About 8 hours later I was hating life and Nebraska as a whole after going to 3 different gas stations and 2 hotels only to find out Nebraska doesn't have any bathrooms to speak of. I literally danced in the parking lot almost in tears while jeff peed on the road (men don't know how easy they have it!) and filled the car with gas. Finally we found an open gas station with a real live toilet and sink. It was my own personal heaven for 2 minutes and then I got out of there as fast as I ran in and we hit the road again. We spent the night in North Platte Nebraska and made it to Chicago the next day around 11pm.


Nothing but us and the open road



Crossing the Mississippi River

We spent 2 fun nights in Chicago, visited with family, shopped til we dropped in the city and then once again to my excitement and Jeff's dismay we hit the road!


Chicago




Feeling good after a day of shopping in the city




Chicago White Sox stadium


Lake Michigan


Really cool Bahai temple outside the city

Had I known what was to follow later in the afternoon I'm not so sure we would have left Chicago.. EVER. Around 3pm Jeff and I are minding our sweet business listening to a book on tape when our car goes out of control and I swear we hit an elephant, with steel legs. The second we stopped we both instinctively already knew what had happened, the tire blew. We pulled off and made sure each other was ok before getting out to assess the damage. Jeff's safe was enough to tell me it was a lot worse than it felt. Sure enough not only did the tire blow but it took my blinker light and whole front left fender with it. It was a tangled mess on the side of the highway. We got towed and ended up taking a 3 hour detour in a small town named Holladay, Ohio where we met some very nice folk and got 4 new tires for my tiny and mangled car. At first I was pissed. I was really mad and all I could think was I knew something like this was going to happen we should have sold the stupid car and cut our losses... blah blah blah. And then I realized how lucky we were and that it could have potentially been a lot worse! I thanked my heavenly father for the safe trip we had had thus far and Jeff and I decided this was his nudge for us to get new tires on my car now instead of waiting until the fall like we had planned. We ended up laughing about it for the next 3 hours while my car got fixed and came away with a good attitude about the whole thing. But that didn't stop us for too long and we were back on the road. We had a quick dinner pit stop with friends in Cleveland and then drove through the night and got home to CT around 0600 the next morning. We went right to bed we were both exhausted!


Two face (harvey dent) as I like to call her now. The Terminator if you're asking Jeff.


what was left



very sad watching her get towed


We were able to get four new tires and get back on the road, we even stopped and were lucky enough to pick up my hubcap but can you even imagine the looks I get driving that baby around town and with Utah plates to top it off!

The long time coming but totally worth the wait UPDATE

Alright, so I realize people haven't been checking their blogs on an hourly basis waiting for this but a girl can dream right? These days I have plenty of time to dream, mostly of the day-dreaming sort but that's another blog post in it's own so...
I wanted to start at the beginning with the wedding but our photos are in transit so we must wait. So on to the next best thing...

THE HONEYMOON!!!!
Our Honeymoon was awesome, we started it off right and spent our first night as Mr. and Mrs. @ the Grand Hotel in SLC. Amazing! I could live there. It was beautiful and the view was just as good. We had a very early morning wake up call, Red Bull for breakfast and headed to the airport for our 0715 flight to? I honestly don't remember what airport. We arrived in Cancun around 330 Sunday afternoon and upon arriving at our hotel we were given drinks and whisked away to our room via an extra large golf cart, it was awesome! The view from our room was amazing! On one side we had white sand and the most beautiful and clear blue ocean and on the other we had the coast and nightlife and water.







We spent 2 entire days next to the pool and enjoyed the 24/7 wait service, something we both agreed we could get use to. We explored the mall that was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel and the flea market that was 10 mins in the other direction. On tuesday we gave in to both our secret dreams of swimming with the dolphins and spent an hour in the water with Echo and Satu. It was so fun, I was a little nervous getting into the water for some reason but the dolphins were so good and calm and knew exactly what to do. We got to hug and kiss them (Echo tried to put the moves on me and Jeff got a little jealous) rub their bellies, make them dance and sing, shake hands and the best part swim with them. I was also a little (a lot) nervous for this particular part. You have to swim out in the middle of the pool by yourself and then the trainer sends the dolphins swimming your way, they are so fast you have to be prepared to grab on and they pull you in the water. It was so fun, Jeff did a little bit different swim where the dolphins pushed their noses into his feet and he was propelled out of the water like superman it was so cool and his face was priceless. So worth it. We wish we would have gotten pictures but of course we couldn't take our new underwater camera in, they took pictures throughout the swim and then tried to charge us $29 for one 8x10 photo. Umm... nice try.
We went to a water park as well (attached to the dolphin aquarium) and that all made for a very fun and exhausting day. On Wednesday we got up and were on a bus by 0730 only to panic that we had left our safe door open in our hotel room so while we were picking up more people at one of the hotels Jeff ran inside to call our hotel, they were great and sent a manager and security guard to our room to close the safe. In the meantime our bus started pulling away and I had to run up to the front and tell them to stop that my husband was inside! I'm sure it was a sight. Anyway, we went to the Cenote, a natural water well and once again panic struck. We realized we and by we I mean ME forgot to grab the battery of the camera off the charger. NO CAMERA DAY #2. Bloody. We spent what I thought was a little bit of pesos ($17usd) on a disposable wind up camera (Yes they still make them! I was just as shocked as you must be right now.) Imagine the shock of the people we asked to take our picture. "Oh what?" "You have to wind it." "Where do I look?" "In the small whole." click. wind. wind. wind. wind. wind. Click. wind. wind. wind. wind. Followed by lots of laughter and more quiet expressions of, "wow, I didn't know they even made those anymore!" Like I said before it was a sight. The Cenote was beautiful and when we develop (ughkk choke) the pictures well let's be honest I don't even know what happened to that $17 camera so you will never see the Cenote. Too bad, go to Mexico if you want I guess. We had lunch at this rather shady and interesting "restaurant" in some little town after leaving the Cenote and headed for Chichen Itza. So cool! If you didn't know it became one of the new 7 wonders of the world in 2005 and there's no wonder why. It is so advanced in mathematics, astrology and their calendar system is more accurate than the one we use today. About 20 minutes after we got there it started to sprinkle and then rain and then the clouds opened up and it poured for the entire 4 hours that we were there. But we had a good time and met some really nice friends from... salt lake city of all places who just happened to work at IMC and just graduated nursing school with 2 of mine and Jeff's coworkers from IMC. You go all the way to mexico and the people you meet are mormons from SLC, UT. It was very fun to talk to them and they were kind enough to take some pictures for us and email them to us.
We were serenaded at dinner that night by a mariachi band and loved it so much Jeff paid them to play for us again. They were so good!
We got lots of sun, ate lots of delicious food, spent lots of money, and most of all just enjoyed the time and everything we did together. Honeymoons are great.


Jeff showing me how to calculate things on his new calculator watch @ the Grand


Pool time!


this little monster wouldn't leave me alone! I couldn't relax knowing he was only a few feet away.. gross.


the views were incredible from every direction




Jeff decided to give us new names for the week. Meet Esteban and I his wife Isabel.


laying in the hammock after dinner


loving our underwater camera!


our awesome cabana bed by the pool


Chichen Itza


we're a little damp can ya tell?




at the flea market


going home

I realize I got a little picture happy with this post but there are so many good ones so I will make a slideshow one of these days..